Pupil
by littlebirds
Summary: The war is lost. Seven hundred paces north, she waits. The beginning of the end.**AU/Canon Divergent. **Rated M for several very good reasons- Hr/G, G/NL, major character death, violence.


Standard disclaimer. Don't own it.

Please heed the warnings- **Rated M** for adult themes, sexual situations, major character death, and violence. Please, **mature readers only**.

This is an AU. The Trio never went to Shell Cottage, but retreated back into the woods after escaping Malfoy Manor. Two of them turn up at Hogwarts in November, and the battle begins.

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><p>-November-<p>

A flick of black lashes. Your lungs cave at Harry's open eyes.

Hermione's wand rolls into the toe of your shoe as you push wide the cottage door. Crunched over him, she says _shhh, shhhh_. Her blood-tinged fingers thread through his wet hair, and, where the burns all end, stroke light over his heart. You cringe at the scrape of your own footsteps as you make your way to where he lies, thinking to grab his hand, to let him know you're near. But there are no hands to hold. Just charred claws cracked with blister red. So you kneel between his feet, willing him to look your way, to be invited in. But it's a closed circuit, this. Just his skin and her fingers, and all their world in between.

Harry rasps out, "Ron," then smiles when Hermione smiles. She drags her knuckles over his cheek, chokes on a laugh.

"I think you'll know what…," she whispers.

His smile fades as he shudders, winces. Hermione says s_hhhh, shhhh_.

All the time, he's shaking. He's in shock and dying. Hermione leans over him. She kisses his forehead, whispers, kisses his lips. She wipes her tears from his cheeks, holds his face in her hands until he stills and lets go.

-December-

Hermione finds the wine in one of the burned-out hulls in the valley. The rubble had stopped smoking by the time she arrived, the bodies on the lawn draped in the bright blanket of fresh snow. She tells you this as she pops the first cork, as she gulps a quarter of the bottle before your eyes. She sighs, tells you to relax. There's more in her bag.

She's pilfered preserves, jams, and some sort of soup. Jars and jars she pulls from her satchel. The house was destroyed, but the cellar pantry was pristine. She opens another bottle, sets it in front of you. Burgundy wine- ink black in green glass.

"It's Christmas," she says, tossing another log on the fire. "Be merry."

Three bottles later, and you're slumped on the floor, begging her to cut your hair. It's always in the way, you say, and you hate the feeling of it brushing your back. She sits behind you, fingers stroking through, untangling it as you speak. You say, it's like someone reaching for you, but never quite grabbing hold.

"And so you keep waiting," she twists the ends around her fingers. "For someone," –she tugs- "to grab hold?"

The real question is in her breath, in the there/not there of her lips skimming the fine, baby hairs on your neck. And you might be drunk, but every nerve is alight, and you just want her to touch you, to feel another set of hands move on your body. You think of Dean and Harry. Of NevNevilleNev. The memory turns in your belly and swells wet in your mouth, and you say yes, then tilt your head to the side to give her room to work.

-January-

She pants out pieces of their names- your brother's when you use your fingers; Harry's when you use your tongue. Her eyes snap open, heat inside. She flashes her teeth, then flips you onto your back. And though her lips are gentler than they used to be, her grip less bruising, it stings to know, even as she drapes your leg over her shoulder, she's still holding her own with two boys in a tent, miles away, in her mind.

You assume there are things you aren't meant to ponder. Mysteries- like His initials branded over the knobs of her collarbones, or the straight seams scarring the back length of her legs. You don't ask, and she doesn't offer. Until the morning the black smoke from the valley blots out the sun. Then she turns from the window, unbuttoning the too familiar men's shirt she's taken to wearing, and teaches you the spell.

"We're not animals," she says, dropping His shirt to the floor. She collects her hair, gives you the span of her back. "This isn't some orgiastic perversion. It's about focus."

Her voice. So damn prim you can't wait to slice into her. But, then, wand in hand, it's not so easy.

You spit out the words: _Incisus Resarcio_. The hairs breadth of blood between her shoulder blades is black in the light of her blue flames. The skin underneath is already smooth, mended back together, but you stop, breathless, wand tip trembling.

She twists her hair in her hands.

"Again," she whispers. "Please."

And He never could deny her anything.

Mystery solved.

….

The first slash, you grunt. The second, you hiss. Every muscle balls tight, ready to push up and bolt away.

Her voice. "Relax, sweetie. Breathe." So you do, and she marks you, again. And again. Again.

If you want to go to the place she goes, you have to let her show you the way.

Your eyes are squeezed shut, your shoulders and knees grinding against the floor.

Again. Again.

"Breathe, darling."

Lips, soft and warm, on the small of your back. Fingers on your temple. Your hair gliding away from your nose, your mouth. Cool air on your cheek.

"Breathe."

-February-

It's eight months since they lost Ron.

She tells you this over jam on toast on tin plates. You guess it's some to-the-day anniversary, though you can't fathom why she still bothers to keep track of that sort of thing. There aren't even real days, anymore. Just short bursts of light breaking the dogged, soundless night.

She pushes away her un-touched plate and goes back to her pile of smuggled books, her star charts, her plots for Ministry annihilation. You eat half of what she left behind, rearrange the logs in the fire, then watch as she walks out the door. When she comes back, the tip of her nose is pink as the sunset burning out behind the mountain. She's cold, wet. Her jeans are glazed in grave dirt.

She sits naked in front of the fire, humming, carefully combing her fingers through her curls. You lie on the cot across the room, lulled, squinting just so, conjuring rug fringe and worn-edged upholstery from the golden flickers on the floor. The crackle of the fire becomes ruffling pages. Muffled laughs bloom over the sharp _snak_ of a gobstone game. Watercolour sounds. Aural stains bleeding to the surface. True memories. False peace.

You'd gladly live in the lie if it could be so, again. But it can't. And she buried her delusions months ago. You should lay yours down, too.

_After_, you think. After her body is warm to the touch. After you've finished each other off and she's fallen asleep. When all you can smell is her fresh-tangled hair, and the bare curve of her shoulder is a still, white slice in the firelight. That's when you'll think about tomorrow, the end of all this.

….

She crushes the last bit of chalk into the black top then turns and takes out the first watchman. The rest is easy. Four quick kills, four hot fires. The Ministry's protective spells are laughable; two unsounded alarms and something you once heard Bill call a "Fry Field". Such paltry precautions. You dismantle them all and shake your head at the hubris.

Did they really think she'd play by the same old rules?

Did they really think she'd stopped playing?

Back in the abandoned shop front, she drops to her knees, rattles through her bag, then turns her wand on herself. Your stomach drops at the dark pooling in her palm.

"Hermione." You lurch toward her. She squeezes a tight fist, murmurs as the blood seeps around her fingers and drips into the jars of soil lined in front of her.

"Stay here." She stands, cradling the jars against her chest. You think to reach for her but you're too stunned and she's too quick. Blood Magic. She never let you in on any of this, and now all you can do is stand in the doorway and watch as she runs from one mark to another, wait for whatever cataclysm she's calling down. Every ring of smashing glass brings another thick pulse in the air. Clouds churn above. And if magic is intent, what could be more loaded than the fusion of His dust and her blood strewn north and south, east and west.

The incantation is jagged, sibilant. It flows from her lips with unyielding ease, and you realise, these last months, this is all she really wanted—to rip through the walls of this dead city. The ground shakes. Bricks burst and crumble. Glass splinters, rains over you as you run to the corner. You crouch in the shards and cover your head, but you can hear them rising, now, squealing out from underground, rats en masse. The first shouts. Shoe soles slapping , grinding on pavement. Screaming. The hollow roar of flames lapping open air. Screaming. And screaming. And screaming. You strain to hold onto the thin thread of her voice, her relentless song, and, hours later, you swear you still hear her as you sift through the dust, swear she still hums beneath the chunk of exploded wall where you find her twisted, lips and open eyes powdered in ash.

…..

"Ginny…"

You turn your face to the damp brick, refuse to open your eyes. It's happened before, this- your brain misfiring in the velvet, the cruel up-spring of your heart when all you want is to sink down slowly.

"Ginny. Oh, gods…"

_Steady, brown eyes and soft murmurs. Scratched-out plans on a cinder-strewn hearth. A whisper, hot in your hair as you both hide, backs pressed hard to the wall of the frozen, stone corridor. _

"It's me…"

Fingertips, coarse over the back of your hand. It feels like before. But it can't be, and you won't believe.

"Ginny…

Gin…"

His body spun, sagged left. He threw his arm out to cast, then his legs gave. And they burned everyone who hit the ground, dead or alive. So he must be an impostor, a spectre. A magnificent illusion.

Light courses over your face. Bright light, the sort un-allowed here in the tunnels. You clamp your eyes shut until he's finished his examination. Your wand throbs, ready, in the palm of your hand.

"Come on, Weasley," he breathes, scrapes closer. " 'S hardly the place for a kip."

Your words.

_A mid-April deluge._ _Water sluicing into your eyes, pounding down your neck. Broken panes in the left wall of Greenhouse Three, the Tarantacula waving tiny fires. Goyle ten steps away, a black lump in the mud. You, kneeling, needing this one to get up, to run with you before Amycus gets wind. Your voice trembling under the joke. His eyes still closed, rain beading on his lips as he smiles._

He remembers.

You don't look, just turn your palm to his skin. You grasp and tug, and he falls forward, but it's fine, just fine. You know you can breathe beneath this weight.

His arms wind tight around you, squeezing out his name.

"Nev…"

-March-

He moves steadily. You follow him through the dark, fingers skimming the tunnel walls, feeling for any rumblings above. When it's quiet, you crawl into what's left of the daylight, pick through the rubble with wrapped hands.

"Leave no trace," He says, dropping a dented tin of tomato soup into his pack. "They're not exactly searching, but…"

Most everyone is gone. Smiling, he tells you how the Muggles weren't as easy to corral as they should have been. He tells you how, in large swaths of the city, the Might of Magic had been no match for their sheer numbers, for their cradle-to-grave culture of brutalism. He says they will come back. He's heard their planes overhead, watched as the great metal bellies shat out black capsules of fire. He says the Muggles will eventually blast this whole island to sand, but for now pockets of the city stand unmarked and empty, and he has something he'd like to show you.

The building is white brick and unlit brass lamps and beautiful, unbroken expanses of glass, and you follow him along the tree line of the garden gone wilted straight to the shiny black cellar door. He leads you up and up in the dark, checks for new bodies at every landing, squeezes your hand as his magic sweeps through the silence. At the mouth of the fourth floor corridor, he stops, laces his fingers with yours, walks with you side by side.

His wandlight is a streak in the numbers on the door. Inside, silk and mirrors, structured pillows and a big, very big, bed. Carpet so thick it shifts like sand under your feet. "This..." he says. The French doors swing into rustling shapes and warm, thick air, and the smell nearly drags you to your knees. Dirt and flowers. Gardenias by the Burrow's broom shed. Your mother, bare armed in the summer sun.

You're supposed to say it's beautiful, the flora twining over and around the claw foot tub, the glass ceiling and walls, and the night sky all around. You're supposed to smile, because, really, that's all he seems to want.

But your body is too tight around the memories, and what you need is to be breached, to be split open and unraveled. So you give him his smile, but only as you undo the button of your cords.

"Have a bath with me, Nev?"

It's sweet, how he turns away, how he stutters, "This isn't ... that's not..." It's sweeter, still, when he holds the towel in front of himself as he climbs into the water with you.

You pinch at the inside of his thigh with your toes. "I've seen all that before, you know."

And he grins. "Yeah, but never all at once."

….

It's true. You've never been so naked together.

His hands grip your hips, thumbs making rough circles where skin skims over bone, and this, _this_ is what you've missed. Strong legs and thick, slow fingers and the peaty smell of his sweat. It hits you all at once, how long you've been without him, and every thread of fine, bright pain from the last nine months flares anew. Love. It's just like love, and between the jolt of terror and your nipple cradled on his tongue, you come so hard he blurs from sight- red, then white, then red.

-April-

Glass smashes down below.

Neville is already up beside you, his hand clenched around your arm. Another sound, something tumbling, and you both scramble to the foot of the bed, snatch up your clothes, then reach for the others hand. You pull away to grab your wand from where it's slipped from your fingers and the sudden blast sends you onto your side. A white glow over the walls, boots and splintered wood, a deep, sickening gurgle, and then, "Well, what have we here?"

"Looks like Longbottom and... fuck me, is that... It is..." Claws against your scalp, and then you're pulled up, gagging at the stench. Neville's bare foot drags against the floor, out of your sight.

"Twenty thousand apiece for these two..."

"Aye, but the lad... look. Through the throat. 'E's good as dead, now." A flourish in the shadows. Orange light bursts up the wall and you thrash and scream. Greyback turns, jerks you backward by the hair. Man-shaped flames lunge, grab the other one's legs, drag him down. Neville's fingers are burning black spikes over a roaring face. Blue fire, and you reach for him but are spun away.

...

You are stone. A cold, naked slab stood in the middle of a dim-lit room.

Bellatrix cups your breast in her soft, hot palm, and you are stone.

She leans down, inches her hand between your legs, and you are stone.

She whispers in your ear, low, so the others don't hear, "I wonder, when did Longbottom last seed the furrow?" then presses up inside you, just barely, crooks her fingers. She lifts her hand into the space between your face and hers, presents the tips of her nails, the warm, wet shine glistening upon them in the lamplight. She leans in, smears it over your lips.

"One last taste...," she whispers.

The smell of sex and charred meat and ash.

You are stone.

"His precious flower..." She threads her fingers through your hair. "Plant her in the garden."

...

Heat. Your breath against your thigh. You flex your toes, but they've nowhere to go.

Eyes open and there is nothing. Nothing. Black. Void. Panic trills through your teeth, your kneecaps, your wrists.

_move_

Walls form the dark.

_move_

_MOVE_

_don't scream push_

No space. Rough wood on all sides. The sunk-in stink of old piss, blood. The smothering damp of your own wretched sweat.

_push no breathe breathe_

You can't breathe. Can't move. Hair sticks, pricks at your skin. Itch. Cramps tight in both thighs, your neck. Splinter in your left heel. Dull, red ache. Trembling. Your body, the explosion behind your heart. Futile, animal fury filling every tight crevice. The sound you make, the way it clangs in your head. You need to do it again, but you can't stand to hear it, so you put your mouth on your knee and let go. Noise. Tears and snot. Forever, you scream. You wail all their names into your skin and then you scream some more. Teeth and tongue. You bite down, hard. Cutting pain, clear and true, a white beam of release, and suddenly you know exactly what to do.

_Breathe. _

Force your hand through.

Your slick breasts. Female. Here to be pierced, and that should make it easier.

Fingers over your collarbone, find the place he always found, the fast rhythmic bump. You have no wand, but your blood is pure, and maybe that will finally count for something.

Pain, the skin and blood sort, is a gateway.

She taught you.

Say it out loud so there's never any doubt…

"_Incisus_..."

Push. Dig in.

_Breathe._

"_Incisus... Incisus...Scindum Exolvo_..."

You are magic. Your flesh yielding to your fingers is magic. Exquisite pain and pure intent.

"_Exolvo_..."

The vein, hold it. Break it open.

_Breathe, darling._

_Breathe._

_..._

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><p>Thank you so much for reading. All thoughts or comments are welcome and appreciated.<p> 


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